Integrity, In A Manner Of Speaking

On Valentine's Day, Rubio (R-NRA) said on Trump TV

I think it's important to know all of that before you jump to conclusions that there was some law that we could have passed that would have prevented it. And there may be, but shouldn't we at least know the facts?

And we know it took fewer than 24 hours for Marco Rubio, Psy.D. to "know the facts" because

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said no gun laws would have prevented the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

As part of comments made in an interview with WPBF, Rubio said "it just takes one individual with a deranged mindset that could lead to violence on a mass scale."

He may- as he suggests- be an elected official, a United States senator, with no responsibility to help prevent violence on a mass scale. But as a licensed clinical psychologist, he just knows that Nikolas Cruz possessed "a dangerous mindset"- and one that could lead to mass violence.

And  as Senator, Rubio is an excellent- even psychic- clinical psychologist.  Still, on Thursday he also

said that "people still don't know how" the shooting occurred, or how the 19-year-old suspect, Nikolas Cruz, obtained the weapon he used to kill 17 people in the Broward County school. 

We now have details about the shooting, and also know how that Cruz bought the weapon legally from Sunrise Tactical Supply in Coral Springs, Florida. That's critical- even the weapon had been obtained illegally, there would have been a reprise of the gun fanatics' old siren song:  "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

Senator Rubio should acquaint himself with Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Reality), who if heeded, probably would have prevented the murder of sixteen children and school employees in Parkland. Don't take it from me-:take it from the National Rifle Association, which reported that on November 8, 2017 she

introduced S. 2095, which she is calling the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017. The 125-page firearm prohibition fever dream is perhaps the most far-reaching gun ban ever introduced in Congress.

Subject to an exception for “grandfathered” firearms, the bill would prohibit AR-15s and dozens of other semi-automatic rifles by name (as well as their “variants” or “altered facsimiles”), and any semi-automatic rifle that could accept a detachable magazine and be equipped with a pistol grip, an adjustable or detachable stock, or a barrel shroud. And that’s just a partial list...

Feinstein's proposal never came to a vote and inasmuch as there was no GOP co-sponsor, it's rather unlikely that Senator Rubio (R-NRA) co-sponsored (or came out in favor of) it. Fortunately, the Florida senator will have another chance to propel forward a bill which likely would have saved quite a few lives in his home state because Senator Feinstein

said on Friday that she will introduce legislation to raise the minimum legal age to buy rifles in the wake of a school shooting in Florida.

Feinstein said the legislation would require anyone buying a firearm from a gun dealer to be at least 21 years old.

“Under current law, licensed gun dealers cannot sell a handgun to anyone under 21, but they are allowed to sell assault rifles like the AR-15 to anyone over 18. This policy is dangerous and makes absolutely no sense," Feinstein said.

Regrettably, the GOP will not vote for legislation which would revoke a policy which is dangerous and makes absolutely no sense (video below from March, 2014).. However, Senator Rubio- who claimed there "was (no) law that we could have passed that would have prevented it," at least has a chance to show that he would like to prevent another atrocity as occurred in Parkland, Florida.

He won't, of course. He won't because he has recieved $3,303,355 from pro-gun groups over the course of his career, $90,205 in the 2015-2016 election cycle, after which he earned his A+ rating from the NRA. And he won't because he has integrity. When Marco Rubio is bought, he stays bought.








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Another State With Legalized "Murder"

The politics of abortion has a way of crushing the character of most Republicans.

A case in point is Ohio governor John Kasich, who was "ubiquitous" hanging around the GOP presidential convention in Cleveland in July 2016 but never entered the convention hall.  Kasich also lobbed veiled insults at Donald Grump and

Trump's campaign has fired back; its chairman this week called Kasich's absence "embarrassing."

To Republican delegates and activists, especially those supporting Trump, it's all a bit baffling.

"He's a good man and a bad host," said Bobby Kalotee, a county GOP official from New York who was chatting with fellow politicos at a downtown hotel lobby. "You do not invite guests to your home and not be at your home."

Gregory Peterson, a New York delegate, called the behavior "childish" and "petulant."

"In politics, winning counts," he said. "After you've lost, that's a test of character. You've got to be a big boy now."

If the party of Donald J. Trump is accusing you of lacking "character," thy middle name is Integrity- but no longer in the case of John Kasich.  The governor and 2016 candidate for the GOP presidential nomination always has been a supporter of forced birth and in late December Ohio

became the fourth state to ban abortions performed after a prenatal test shows the fetus has or might have Down syndrome.  

Gov. John Kasich signed into law House Bill 214, the 20th abortion restriction passed since he took office in 2011, and 14 other bills Friday morning.

Under the law, doctors who know of a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis and perform an abortion could be charged with a fourth-degree felony, punishable by up to 18 months in prison. 





You probably know what comes next: "There is no punishment for the woman who seeks the abortion."

Of course there is no penalty for the individual who seeks, and pays for, what forced birth activists consider "murder."  There will be no penalty because the myth that the anti-choice movement is about the life of the fetus, rather than restricting the right of a woman to reproductive freedom, can endure.

With the action taken by Ohio governor Kasich, the number of states so concerned about an act they designate as murder that they punish the indivdual most responsible stands at.... zero. Armed with few facts, the forced birth movement is armed with even less integrity.




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The Politics Of Diversion, Again

On Tuesday evening, Senator Marco Rubio (R-NRA) tweeted "we shouldn't 'jump to conclusions' that gun control laws would've prevented Florida school shooting." Further

Rubio said that "people still don't know how" the shooting occurred, or how the 19-year-old suspect, Nikolas Cruz, obtained the weapon he used to kill 17 people in the Broward County school. 

"I think it's important to know all of that before you jump to conclusions that there was some law that we could have passed that would have prevented it. And there may be, but shouldn't we at least know the facts?" Rubio said on Fox News.

Maybe he should talk to the Ayatollah of his own party, who predictably has jumped to a conclusion and, predictably, to a wrong one, opting for the mental health dodge when at 7:12 Thursday morning, he tweeted

So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!

But Nikolas Cruz evidently realized there was a "problem." for as CNN reports, Broward County Sheriff Scott

Israel also alluded to Cruz's mental fitness during a news conference, while Broward County Mayor Beam Furr said the teen "had been dealing with mental health issues."

"He had been undergoing some treatment. We can't go into detail on that," Furr said. "I don't know if he was exactly on law enforcement's radar, but it wasn't like there wasn't concern for him. He had not been back to the clinic for over a year, so there's been a time where he was receiving treatment and then stopped."

Cruz evidently had either sought, or been forced into, some sort of mental health and/or psychological counseling, contrary to Trump's inference. For whatever reason(s), treatment obviously failed, as it usually does.

Politico notes

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced plans to visit Florida after a gunman opened fire in a high school there, and he said he will push for action on mental health issues and making schools more secure.

Trump said he would push for steps to make “our schools and our children safer" in the wake of the latest high-profile mass shooting, which resulted in the deaths of 17 people. He made no direct mention of the contentious gun control debate, even as activists and Democrats in Congress renewed calls for tougher measures.

“It is not enough to simply take actions that make us feel like we are making a difference," the president said in a nationally televised address from the White House Diplomatic Room. "We must actually make that difference.”

And what is the #1 thing which can "make us feel like we are making a difference without actually making a difference?" If you believed it is the one step Trump illogically would advocate, you win the award, for the President would actually add “We are committed to working with state and local leaders to help secure our schools and tackle the difficult issue of mental health."

If it's too early to consider what we know contributes to the regular practice of school shootings in America, it's too early to assume that all troubled youth respond to their difficulties by murdering seventeen people.

Nikolas Cruz had an AR-15; most young adults do not. That's our starting point, notwithstanding Donald Trump's most recent foray into the politics of diversion.








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The Stopped Clock Named Manigault

Trump speechwriter David Sorensen has resigned over domestic abuse allegations. A few days earlier, White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter had done the same for the same reason.

In September, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who regularly flew on charter and private planes at taxpayer expense, was forced out by John Kelly, who is himself now under great pressure for condoning, and lying about, the Porter matter.

And then there are the guilty pleas and indictments: Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, all far before the ultimate completion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report. There will be more. "The overall level of venality in this administration," Obama-era ethics advisor Norm Eisen tweets, "is like nothing we have ever seen."

Keep that- and Watergate- in mind when considering the case of Omarosa Manigault Newman.

While on Celebrity Apprentice, Manigault allegedly propositioned Piers Morgan, recommending "a showmance. You know, a romance on the show — we get it on together. Happens all the time on Apprentice. Everyone has sex together. Then we can make lots of money out of it,

Naturally, that qualified her for the Trump campaign, during which Manigault stated "I am the director of African-American outreach for Donald Trump... I know Donald Trump in his heart."

Completely unqualified, she was a perfect fit for the position of communications director of the Office of Public Liaison in the Trump administration, from which she was fired because she reportedly had been using the White House car service "as an office pickup and drop-off service," then "tried to storm the White House residence to appeal to Trump."

Now on Celebrity Big Brother, she recently was featured on a promotional clip, claiming teary-eyed of Trump  "I was haunted by tweets every day. Like, what is he going to tweet next... It’s going to not be OK, it’s not. It’s so bad.”

Manigault was slammed for her as an insincere, self-promoting opportunist- which she is. And now, Salon's Matthew Rosza notes

"As bad as y’all think Trump is, you would be worried about [Vice President Mike] Pence," Manigault Newman told her housemates on a recent episode of "Big Brother: Celebrity Edition." "Everybody that's wishing for impeachment might want to reconsider their life. We would be begging for days of Trump if Pence became president, that’s all I’m saying. He’s extreme."

She added: "I'm Christian, I love Jesus, but he thinks Jesus tells him to say things. I'm like, 'Jesus didn't say that.'"

Roughly 45 years ago, there was another woman who was derided for having said wacky things.She was accued of being mentally ill, which she was not. However, she probably did have a drinking problem and was brutally obnoxious.

Martha Mitchell, wife of Attorney General turned campaign manager for President Nixon, told the media that the scandal known as "Watergate" reached all the way to the top. She was ridiculed and/or generally ignored by everyone (including Woodward and Bernstein), save famed UPI  reporter Helen Thomas.





But she was right, and bears a similarity to Omarosa Manigault who is, well, a creep, which renders her similar to many members (past and present) of the Trump Administration. And she is concerned primarily, nearly exclusively, with herself.

Nevertheless, despite Rosza's implication, that does not make her wrong about Mike Pence. Like the stopped clock that is right twice a day, Manigault is probably right roughly once a year.The Vice-President could issue a statement denying Manigault's statement or even one saying it doesn't warrant a response, meanwhile asserting the centrality of Jesus Christ in his life. He could issue a more anodyne statement, maintaining that Jesus is a role model for him, a largely meaningless claim that even agnostics and atheists would find acceptable.

He has not done so, perhaps because it would be insincere.  (He does lie, however.) When Omarosa Manigault contends Mike Pence is "extreme"  and "thinks Jesus tells him to say things," she is probably correct. And ifIt is accurate, we eventually would- as she argues- "be begging for days of Trump if Pence became president."




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Making A Killing

"Heavens to Archimedes, it’s Infrastructure Week again!" declared Charlie Pierce on Monday. He cites an article in The Guardian in which an Associated Press reporter explains

Officials said the $200bn in federal support would come from cuts to existing programs.

Half the money would go to grants for transportation, water, flood control, cleanup at some of the country’s most polluted sites and other projects.

States, local governments and other project sponsors could use the grants which administration officials view as incentives for no more than 20% of the cost. Transit agencies generally count on the federal government for half the cost of major construction projects, and federal dollars can make up as much as 80% of some highway projects.

The Huffington Post quotes an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech University arguing

Trump’s infrastructure plan flips the traditional capital expense funding model from 80 to 90 percent federal funding to 10 percent federal funding. The majority of the funding mandates get pushed to the states and private funding, with the administration taking credit for the investment.

Under a long-term lease, Ronald ReaganWashington National Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport are operated by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Although they are legally owned by the federal  government, that may not last long because, as Politico notes

The Trump administration's infrastructure plan released Monday proposes that the feds consider selling off Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport.

The administration wants to allow federal agencies to divest assets if they "can demonstrate an increase in value from the sale would optimize the taxpayer value for federal assets," according to Trump's blueprint for an infrastructure package, released today.

"Optimize the taxpayer value for federal assets" sounds like Trumpeze for selling off an asset to the private sector. And so

State and local agencies or the private sector may be better at managing assets currently owned by the federal government, the administration argues, and federal agencies should be able to "identify appropriate conditions under which sales would be made." They should also "delineate how proceeds would be spent."

Under the administration's proposal, federal agencies would have to complete an analysis demonstrating an "increase in value from divestiture."

Let me guess: if the asset is a losing proposition for the American people, it will remain in public hands. If it is a desirable asset, it will be relinquished for the sake of private profit.

After the President at his State of the Union address gave the very broad outline of his infrastructure scam, Paul Krugman pointed out there is "no way to turn sewer systems, protective levees on rivers, and lots of other stuff into profit centers." Worse

even where it does work — say, on toll roads and bridges — that private investment doesn’t come free; it’s in return for the ability to collect fees from the public, which is just taxation in another form. And there’s no evidence that doing public investment this way saves any money. On the contrary, it usually ends up costing taxpayers more than just having the government build the thing.

If Trump is proposing it, there are a few sure things: not all of the funding will come from the federal government; he will take credit for the projects; corporations will take a significant cut. Donald Trump will, too.








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But Those Emails!

Donald Trump infamously remarked of his departed staff secretary, Rob Porter

Well, we wish him well. He worked very hard. I found out about it recently and I was suprised by it But we certainly wish him well. It's obviously a tough time for him. He did a very good job when he was in the White House and we hope he has a wonderful career and hopefully he will have a gret career ahead of him. But it was very sad when we heard about it and certainly he's also very sad. 

Now he also as you probably know,  he says he's innocent and I think you have to remember that. He said very strongly yesterday that he's innocent. So you you'll have to talk to him about that. But we absolutely wish him well. He did a very good job while he was at the White House.

Joe Scarborough found "two or three phrases" which "stand out" to be "shocking" and "unbelievable." It would be far more shocking were Donald Trump to string together 10-11 sentences about some random matter and it were not unbelievable. If remarks of similar length about sexual abuse or harassment or domestic violence were not unbelievable, it would be an upset of epic proportions.

Still, Scarborough's comments made more sense than of emerging sidekick Katty Kay, who contended "and the thing you noticed about that first comment- those remarks that the President made in the Oval- absolutely no mention of the women, let alone a word of sympathy for them."





He may be ill-informed, uncurious, ruthless, dishonest, racist, misogynistic, manipulative, egotistical, and deviously patronizing.  But he's not much of a hypocrite. And if Donald Trump were to utter one word of sympathy for a woman who as a woman had been mistreated by a man, he would be a raging hypocrite. So give him his due- he was in character.

Further, Donald Trump is not a pastor, a therapist, a social psychologist, or journalist. He has never even met the women who have reported domestic abuse.. However, he is President of the USA- and was the employer of Rob Porter. He saw him frequently and spoke to him often.  Porter had access to the most powerful individual in the world, the man holding the position that once was leader of the free world.

While he awaited permanent security clearance, Rob Porter had access to classified documents. NPR's Brian Naylor reports

... national-security experts warn that that person (with the such a background) could be subject to blackmail by a foreignor domestic adversary. That's especially true when it comes to a person with close access to the president, like one responsible for putting the papers the president reads in front of him.

Naylor adds "700,000 people are waiting to have clearances processed, according to a report issued last week by the U.S. Comptroller's office." That's a serious long-term problem, one media will continue to ignore because it's tied up in the underfunding of government began decades ago by Saint Reagan.

Nevertheless, there is an immediate short-term problem which is understated, underreported, and potentially calamitous.  Slate's Jeremy Stahl notes "the ultimate arbiter of who in the executive branch is able to handle this country's most sensitive secrets is one man. That man is Donald Trump."

That's Donald T-r-u-m-p, as in Vladimir Putin's man in the West. Stahl explains

There is nothing preventing Trump from giving top security clearance access to whoever he wants, professional agency adjudication of the normal security-clearance process be damned. Furthermore, there is nobody—aside, perhaps, from Congress—who has oversight over how Trump can issue security clearances. And because this particular Republican Congress has been fully pliant to Trump’s will on all issues surrounding ethical norms, that basically means Trump has untrammeled say over all such clearances.

Porter is not an isolated incident. Stahl continues

In the cases of (Trump son-in-law Jared) Kushner and Porter, it appears that he has all but broken long-standing norms around clearances in a way that seems to have rendered the entire point of the clearance process at the highest levels of government moot. Another example? Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who ultimately pled guilty to lying to the FBI, was allowed to remain in his job even after the Trump administration had been informed that he might be compromised because of such lies. He resigned only after the lies came to public light.

Individuals such as Rob Porter will come and go, especially in this Administration.  Aside from him, there have been tens (hundreds?) of millions of instances of domestic abuse, and probably more than a few occurring at the precise moment that his resignation was reported.  This incident will pass from the national consciousness and there still will be widespread physical abuse of persons by persons living in the same household.

There will be several- albeit too few- first-hand testimonials from victims, and the American people will not want for awareness of the problem. However, this is the moment, and journalists are the medium, in which the nation can learn about the threat to national security because individuals without proper security clearance may have access to information they shouldn't.

The danger has been largely ignored and may continue... unless the word "Hillary" can be somewhere inserted.




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Not A Good Look

Steve M believes Donald Trump's military parade "will just be a pointless moment of excess" and warns

Don't get worked up about this. If you get worked up about this, your resentment will be the story: There go the liberals, hating America again. Don't give them the satisfaction. Seventy-two hours after it's over, we'll be chasing some ridiculous Trump tweet, and no one will remember the parade even happened.

A reader recognizes that a parade would be "exactly the kind of brutish symbolism that turns out to be very important indeed" but Steve M responds

they'll forget all about it a few days later, and Trump will go back to watching television, while his administration and Congress go back to transferring even more money and power to the rich from the non-rich. That's where the danger lies. Apart from the pro-Russia skew, which is alarming, the real danger of this administration is not that it's fascist, but rather that it's Republican in an effective way.

So far, that is. Admittedly, in this first term of the Trump reign, the Administration hasn't been fascist but instead dangerously "Republican in an effective way."

But this is the first term.  If this extravaganza comes off without major opposition from Democrats or the military- and the GOP maintains control of Congress, thus hindering the Mueller investigation- it might not be the last.  Trump will contrast the event with the Obama "apology tour" and declare that America has been made great again. We might even get to hear that it's "morning in America" again, an actor borrowing from the (successful re-election bid) previous actor-President, as he borrowed the "MAGA" slogan.

President Trump, elected over the objection of a majority of voters and remaining unpopular, has had no mandate to turn the USA into a police state or otherwise.  Although as Steve M. notes he has put into effect a radically conservative policy agenda, his lack of knowledge of how government works, coupled with a Special Counsel's investigation that has kept him off-balance, has blocked any real chance of imposing an authoritarian regime... yet.

Imagine, however, a re-elected Donald Trump, perhaps even with a majority of votes.  At that time, Bill Maher's insightful comment (beginning at 6:35 of the video below) from Friday night's Real Time might prove eerily prescient:

And now tanks in the streets. You know, I mean, I laugh, too. It's a funny premise- comedians, we like a premise like that, too. Ha, ha, ha. I don't- it's not really funny. The idea- because you shouldn't get used to the look of tanks in the streets. We don't have that look in America and when I've seen that look anywhere else in the world it's never been good and to me this is like, hey, better get them used to that- tanks in the streets.









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